DWF And Crew Spent Last Weekend Off The Coast Of North Carolina

First off, thanks so much to you all for coming down and making it such a great time!

What a great time and what a great group of folks to go down there with!

Over the years I’ve done probably 12-15 days of diving down there in Wilmington. I was first introduced to Aquatic Safaris (AS) by my scuba buddies I met through Channel Island Dive Adventures in Southern California. I dove with them on several trips before I even moved out from the West Coast.

Well as I work through Columbia Scuba and know AS it seemed like the time was right to bring some folks down to Wilmington for a weekend of diving.

It’s a roughly 6 hour drive from Columbia, MD down to Wilmington, NC so most of us left Friday afternoon. I brought my own tanks so we had to roll in to Aquatic Safaris’ before their 7 pm closing time on Friday night.

Show time was 7:00 am on Saturday morning for our day of wreck diving. While I wasn’t expecting it, I ended up with 4 students who wanted to complete their PADI Wreck Diver specialty while we were down here. One thing about wreck that seems to surprise everybody is that it’s a class that teaches you all about those sort of non-obvious hazards of the activity.

Before students take wreck, I typically talk to them about it and they don’t really get just how hazardous it is to drop down onto a brand new wreck and start penetrating. But by the time we finish up our specialty every one of my students gets just how much preparation it’ll take to do a safe and sane wreck dive…which is kind of the whole point.

The water temperature was actually in the high 70s at the surface and I was plenty toasty in my 5mm wetsuit (no hood or gloves). One of our guys was wearing a 3/2.

There was actually a fairly wicked current at both sites. The Hyde and Markham wrecks are only a few hundred yards away from each other, so not exactly a surprise. Visibility was < 30 feet.

And oh yeah…I saw a flounder too 🙂

Mr. Flounder

After we got back in we met up for a dinner and made our plans for the piles and piles of Megalodon Shark Teeth we planned to find on Sunday.

On Sunday morning showtime was 7:30 am, but we got to go out on the Big Boat..the Aquatic Safaris I. It’s a longer trip of about 2.5 hours each way..and I wish I could say that I didn’t get seasick. I COULD say that, but it wouldn’t be true.

Here’s a little clip from our boat ride with Aquatic Safaris from Wilmington, NC out to the Fossil Ledge (Sunday, May 21, 2017). The seas were a bit rougher than they were the day before and my seasickness patch was working overtime. Still a great group and a great day on the water!

We did 2 dives that day. One at the (outer) Fossil Ledge and another one at the In Shore Fossil Ledge.